The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  But at the shouts of “What’s happened back in America?” and “Give us all the news!” and “Who’s the president now?” and “Anybody here from Indiana?” all dangers seemed suddenly removed; or at least postponed.

  The questions came from a dozen or more half-uniformed men, who passed out handshakes indiscriminately and made the robot ship’s eighteen captives feel like prodigal sons. Then—

  “A girl!” one of them uttered. All the uniformed men quieted, somewhat in awe, Allison thought, as if a fear or dread came into their thoughts.

  “Where’s the boss here?” Allison inquired.

  An uncomfortable shrug of the uniformed shoulders.

  “In his laboratory. He’ll drop around and take care of you after awhile.”

  “Who are you men, and what are you doing here?” Allison demanded.

  The men glanced at each other and at their own distinctive garb; they seemed loath to answer. A curiously uniform group; all of them well-built men, youngish, perfect pictures of good health. The red lights gleamed upward across their muscular bodies. They were half naked, like Egyptian gods.

  The form-fitting garments about their loins and the mantelets on their shoulders were of fine mesh woven from some unfamiliar red metal. Most of the brilliant mantelets were decorated with vertical white stripes—one over each shoulder, or in some cases two.

  “We’re entitled to an explanation.” Allison bit his words off forcefully. “We’ve been taken against our wishes.”

  A man with double stripes over his shoulders answered, and there was a note of pathos in his voice.

  “It is not our part to make explanations. We are—slaves.”

  “Slaves—of what?”

  “Of the Dazzalox.”

  “The dazzle—what?”

  “The Dazzalox. The natives of this underground world. We were brought to Mercury by the robot ship, the same as you. You will soon be sold as slaves too—though the market is slumping just now, owing to the current deaths of two Dazzalox potentates.

  “But no matter what happens to the market price,” the man spoke as matter-of-factly as if he had been discussing the price of milk, “you’ll soon be slaves too.”

  “The hell we will!” Allison’s belligerent attitude only evoked smiles from the mantled men. They recalled that they too had bristled with resistance when they first came.

  Allison’s men began to mutter with anger, and their young leader voiced their sentiments.

  “See here, we’ve come here by mistake. We need food and water, and a chance to rest before we start back.”

  At this all of the slaves laughed. Then the double-striped spokesman said:

  “Don’t mind us. We know just how you feel, but you don’t realize what a trap you’ve fallen into. Take it easy and you’ll be better off. Make yourselves comfortable on those circular benches and we’ll see that you get some food and rest first thing. But as for starting back—forget it.”

  The exotic food might have been hothouse products: fruits and vegetables and nuts—rich blends of flavors and aromas and colors. Allison wasn’t surprised that some of his men couldn’t eat. The aged deaf man was definitely ill. Ted Tyndall had apparently lost all his appetite.

  But June O’Neil ate with relish. The side-show barker and the man who had once threatened him with a knife feasted and joked together like old cronies on a picnic.

  A deep-toned musical note resounded through a hundred distant caverns, and some of the slaves started away. Lester Allison finished his meal and started after one of them. A few light-footed bounds and he caught up.

  “My name’s Smitt.” The man with the double stripes on each shoulder offered a friendly hand. “You want to look around, do you? I’m off duty now. On my way to the funeral—or rather funerals. Two of them. Big events on the Dazzalox social calendar. They love their funerals—or farewells, as they prefer to call them—Sure, come along.”

  The deep-throated tone sounded again through the maze of red caverns. Allison glanced back at his party. They were stretched out on benches. Apparently they were in no danger. A few one-stripers were walking among them.

  Smitt led the way over a red metal bridge that crossed a tiny gushing rivulet many feet below.

  “We leave the Red Suburb here,” Smitt said. “From this point on is the civilization of the Dazzalox—a dying race, and the proudest, haughtiest, most ostentatious sons-of-guns you ever saw. We slaves retreat to the Red Suburb in our time off, but most of the time we’re at work here in the main city. Notice the change of colors?”

  Allison saw that the red rock ended. Ahead were higher walls that stretched upward like fortresses of tightly packed columns—greens and blues and blacks. Apparently nature’s tricks of heating and cooling accounted for these formations.

  “A fascinating staircase there,” Allison remarked.

  “Thousands of years old, they say. My owner lives up there.”

  Allison’s eyes followed the magnificent sweep of the stairs toward the spacious shelf in the wall toward the roof of the cavern. It was too lofty for one to see into the home, but the rows of torches burning along the upper levels indicated a wealthy and pretentious built-in mansion.

  “My owner’s name is Naf,” Smitt continued. “Rich and lazy. Sleeps so much that I have a lot of time—more than most of the slaves.”

  “Is Naf retired?”

  “Rather! Everyone’s retired here—except us slaves. And even we are used more for displays and ceremonies than for hand work. Of course we gather and distribute the food. But the necessities of life were so well planned a few centuries ago that things almost take care of themselves—such as the gardens and underground orchards. Things live an interminably long time here—plants and people both.”

  They hiked along the corridors and riverside streets at a good pace. All of Allison’s senses were on the alert, but he had yet to see his first Dazzalox.

  He asked, “What do they do to pass their time?”

  “You said it, brother!” Smitt laughed. “Well, not very much. They polish up their old traditions and have funerals and bloodless wars and bragging parties and feasts. But they don’t do anything—except eat and sleep. I’ve watched them for thirty years—” Allison gave a skeptical look, for Smitt didn’t appear to be more than twenty-five.

  “For thirty years,” Smitt repeated, “and when I stop to realize that the older ones have gone on this way for centuries, I say to myself, ‘No wonder they’re ready to walk into their graves with their eyes wide open.’ ”

  Bewilderment was piling upon Allison almost too fast. By this time he had viewed six magnificent staircases cut in deep-colored rocks and polished from ages of use. His eyes were dancing from the rows of luminous purplish-white lamps that flanked the floorways. His ears rang with the untiring echoes of the funeral gong, drowned now and then by spouting waterfalls. Now he followed up a long narrow clay ramp, at last to look down upon a breathtaking sight.

  “A stadium!” he gasped. “An underground stadium!”

  “They call it the Grand March.” From above the tiers of seats they looked down upon the wide-paved parade ground which ran from end to end like an elongated gridiron. The whole structure filled a vast underground valley.

  “My stars! There’s room for two or three hundred thousand people!” Allison exclaimed.

  “And only five thousand to fill it. A dying race. The native laborers died off a few centuries ago. The gardens needed so little care that the laborers became a superfluous class, who finally either died from misery or from trying to migrate under unfavorable conditions.

  “Well, there’s your five thousand,” Smitt pointed down to the lower, sparsely filled tiers, “waiting for the first of the day’s funerals.”

  Allison viewed the scattered audience incredulously.

  “But those are people—humans.”

  “No, they’re Dazzalox,” said Smitt. “You’ll notice a pronounced difference on closer inspection.”

&nb
sp; The flame of excited curiosity in Allison leaped up.

  “They stand and walk and sit like ordinary people. A little more spring and hop to their step—but the gravity could account for that. Do they have human natures?”

  “That depends upon what you mean. Lots of things pass for human nature,” Smitt observed. “Most of it, I’ve noticed, has a lot to do with animal nature. These Dazzalox are as simple as children and as savage as beasts. Here come a couple of them now.”

  The two men slipped back into a convenient hiding nook, from which they could watch at their leisure without having to make any explanations for Allison’s presence. The two Dazzalox, a male and a female, ascended the steps to take seats in the upper tier.

  They were ornately dressed in highly colored mesh clothing. They were stockily bodied, but their bare legs were thin and sinewy, and their hard crusty bare feet were as ugly as an insect’s. “Kub-a-zaz-ola-jojo-kak—”

  Now Allison saw his face. The male Dazzalox spoke in a metallic voice. It was an expressive face, but it looked as if it were made out of yellow chalk. The female’s face was also of a single solid color, a slightly paler yellow. The female scolded like a bird.

  “Is that a fair sample?” Allison asked. “What’s wrong with their hands and feet?”

  “Nothing. Adapted to living in rocks,” said Smitt. “Did you notice their double eyebrows? Eyebrows below the eyes as well as above. I suppose their ancestors in the dim past enjoyed sunshine, but now most of their light comes from near the floors. Lukle gas torches. They’ve got lukle gas to bum, and plenty of other gases for other purposes.”

  “What are they saying?”

  Smitt listened for a moment. “They’re talking about the funeral that will follow this one. It’s high time for old Jo-jo-kak to die, they say, because he’s forty-five hundred years old.”

  “Forty-five hundred!”

  “That’s not as bad as it sounds, because we get a year here for every eighty-eight Earth days. By Earth time he’s more than a thousand years old.”

  “But a thousand!” Allison searched his informant’s face to make sure he wasn’t being kidded. “Say, do they have old age pensions here?”

  Smitt laughed. “If they did most everyone would be on the rolls. Long lives and a low birth rate are the custom here. However, it isn’t unknown for Dazzalox who are several hundred years old to still have children. Old Jo-jo-kak, for instance. Listen—”

  The Dazzalox couple were still talking about old Jo-jo-kak, and Smitt interpreted their words.

  “The language is simple. You’ll get onto it in no time. Unless, of course, you decide to—er—go back right away,” Smitt added with a wink.

  “Sarcasm never ran a space ship,” Allison retorted. “Maybe that’s why you’re still here.”

  Smitt laughed again, and Allison realized that in the past eventful hour a bond of friendship had sprung up between them.

  “And speaking of space ships,” said Lester Allison, “there’s something that’s burning me up. How the devil can this dying race of powdery-faced Dazzalox, who evidently don’t have electric light, or automobiles, or radios—how the devil can they have robot space ships that slip out and gather up a load of Earth folks and chase back again like a homing pigeon?

  “It’s inconsistent. There’s a loose screw somewhere around here, and it’s beginning to rattle in my ears worse than that funeral bell.”

  “Ah,” Smitt sighed. “You’re hot on the trail of the brains in this set-up. There’s brains in these here hills, all right. Sometime soon I’ll give you a look back of the scenes, and you can draw your own conclusions.”

  Allison pondered his friend’s words only to find that the mystery deepened. The brains of this set-up?

  Allison recalled an answer some slave had given him when he had just arrived: “The boss is in his lab”

  Well, whoever the boss was—whether man or beast or robot or spirit—Allison resolved to see him.

  The funeral gong silenced and the first of the farewell processions came into view.

  CHAPTER III

  The Symbol of Death

  The central figure of the funeral procession was an old male Dazzalox with long yellow hair who stood in the center of a moving platform waving his arms at the crowd.

  “Where’s the corpse?” Allison asked. “That’s it—the old man waving his arms. He’ll be a corpse in a few minutes.”

  Allison was aghast. “But why?”

  “Because this is his day to die.”

  “You mean he has to die, because it’s his turn or something?”

  “He wants to die. He’s lived until he’s tired of living. There’s no sense waiting until you die a natural death here in Mercury. It just isn’t being done. Voluntary deaths are getting more popular right along because—well, after all, it’s the one way the Dazzalox have of escaping boredom.

  “The old man set the date for this event a year or so ago. The same with Jo-jo-kak. It’s the only pleasure these fellows have left on their social calendars.”

  “Pleasure?” Allison muttered. “Darned if I can see how death could be a pleasure!”

  “You aren’t a thousand years old,” Smitt retorted wisely. “But you can see for yourself that it is a pleasure for that old gent.”

  The procession was directly below them now. The crowd cheered in high chirping voices. Here and there the old man had the procession stop while he divested himself of a short speech, with many a vigorous shout and gesture.

  “All memorized and practiced in private,” said Smitt, “My owner, Naf, is working on his farewell now, though he hasn’t set the date yet.”

  The color scheme of the procession, Allison noticed, was simple but striking. The old man with the yellow hair was dressed from head to foot in a flowing costume of bold black, with a black mask and black and white-striped ankelets.

  The moving platform was painted in black and white bars, and the human slaves who bore it wore mantelets with black and white stripes.

  At last the procession came to a stop at the remote end of the Grand March, at a door in the rock wall also marked with black and white vertical bars.

  “Those stripes must be the symbol of death,” Allison remarked.

  Smitt nodded. “The door leads into a long tunnel that is filled with death gas. Another bounty of nature. Death gas is plentiful and it provides a painless way to die. Any slave would be happy if he only believed he would eventually die by death gas, rather than by some Dazzalox violence—the Floating Chop, for instance.”

  The old man’s last moment had come and he apparently gloried in it. He gave a magnificent bow and, amid a flood of farewell cheers, leaped nimbly down from the platform and marched to the door. A slave opened it, the old man went in and the door closed . . . “What happens to the body?” Allison whispered after silent minutes.

  “Bountiful nature comes to the rescue again. The body remains in the tunnel untouched, but twice each year—that is, every forty-four days, Earth time—the boiling seas from the sun side overflow through all these caverns and sweep everything away. The people’s homes, of course, are all high above the flood level, but the river beds and streets are washed clean.”

  Allison abruptly rose. “I’m going back to the Red Suburb,” he announced.

  “Come back in an hour or two,” said Smitt, “if you want to see old Jo-jo-kak’s farewell. In fact you might as well wait right here. There won’t be anything going on until it’s over. What’s the hurry?”

  “I just remembered something.” Allison gave a wave and hurried off.

  Smitt followed after him. “You’ll get a kick out of old Jo-jo-kak. He’s a bit eccentric . . . Allison, what the hell—”

  Allison bounded down the long clay ramp with Smitt at his heels.

  “That black and white door,” Allison panted, and kept on running. “I just remembered there was a door marked like that back at the Red Suburb. My folks don’t know the danger.”

  “Wait, let m
e explain!” But Smitt was losing ground. However, Allison missed the way and came to a stop in a dead end, and then realized that his guide was still indispensable.

  “That striped door is safe; that is, none of your gang will get in there by mistake. It’s there for a purpose.” More explanation was demanded by Allison’s searching gaze. Smitt tried to wave the matter aside.

  “Hell, quit worrying about things. You’re well-built and you’ll be a cinch

  for the slave market. No striped door is gonna cross your path.”

  Allison stared. “What are you driving at, man?”

  “Well, you may have noticed that all of us slaves fall into a uniform physical type. That’s been a tradition since the first load of slaves came in—about forty years ago. The boss found out that the Dazzalox like well-built young American men, so that’s what he gives them. People who don’t fall into that classification are—er—spared the humiliation of becoming slaves.”

  “How?”

  “By a painless process of elimination—the striped door. It’s really a kindness, in comparison to—”

  “Kindness!” Allison roared. He grabbed Smitt by the arms and glared at him. “They’d better not try any kindness on my group!”

  Smitt smiled calmly. “Relax, Allison. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not hard-boiled. Down here the fates are different. I’ve learned to accept them. You’ll have to, too.”

  “All right. What’s the bad news?”

  “Well, I glanced at your group. It was plain as day that there were five—er—unsuitable ones out of your eighteen. By this time they have been culled out—by way of the striped door.”

  “Which five?” Allison shouted.

  “The deaf old man, the Negro—but only because he was sick; the one-armed man, the fat tramp, and—of course—the girl.”

  Down the cavernous lane they flew, Allison ahead, Smitt sailing after him in tow like a kite. When the red bridge came in sight, the gasping slave was left behind. Allison raced into the Red Suburb. A single glance at his group lying around on the benches, and he knew at once that some were missing. “Where’s June O’Neil?” he blurted to the first person he reached.